A popular joke among American students majoring in Slavic Studies is that you can pretty much sum up the entirety of Russian history by saying things have gone from “bad to worse.” It is a gross oversimplification, ignoring important periods of peace and prosperity during which Russian art, culture, and commerce could flourish. At the same time, there seems to be an underlying truth to this joke that has caused it to stick. As the Russian political scientist Vladimir Gelman put it in a 2019 article he wrote for Riddle , “Practically all analysts and observers of Russia today, regardless of their political leanings, tend to agree about the country’s poor quality of governance.” From czars that commanded respect by virtue of their lineage rather than the contents of their character to bloodthirsty Bolsheviks that leveraged communist ideals for personal gain, Russia knows no shortage of leaders that have left the country worse off than they found it. The following list takes a closer look at some of them.…